Brian Abeel leads international accounting operations for the world’s largest aerospace company as a director at Boeing. He\u2019s also an active member of Navos\u2019 board of directors and has served there for the past three years.<\/p>\n
There was a powerful, personal reason behind Abeel\u2019s decision to join the board in 2016. He knew it would give him an opportunity to lead others and make decisions in an entirely new way \u2014 a way that hits much closer to home for him and his family.<\/p>\n
He also knew firsthand that the efforts of Navos board members made a difference for people in his community because his daughter, Meseret, received compassionate care through Navos for a severe mental illness.<\/p>\n
Meseret was adopted by Abeel and his wife, Leticia Lopez, from an Ethiopian orphanage when she was 12 years old. The first time Abeel and Lopez realized that Meseret needed professional help was in 2013, when she was 15. After several months of increasingly challenging, defiant and angry behavior, Lopez brought Meseret to a Seattle hospital where she was given a diagnosis of depression and possible anxiety. What seemed like a phase of teenage rebellion at first resulted in several episodes when she became increasingly paranoid, then unresponsive.<\/p>\n
In April 2014, Meseret was taken to a behavioral health hospital in Kirkland where she stayed for 10 weeks. She rarely spoke when her parents came to visit, and sometimes she was completely catatonic. Abeel and Lopez worried the daughter they once knew was gone.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when Navos stepped in.<\/p>\n
After leaving the hospital, Meseret was placed in a state-run program administered by Navos and Seattle Children\u2019s Home called Children\u2019s Long-term Inpatient Program. The very first thing the Navos team did when Meseret arrived was to gather everyone involved in her care to discuss planning for her future \u2014 that included Abeel, Lopez, Meseret\u2019s doctors and psychologists, and Meseret herself.<\/p>\n
That first day at Navos was different than other facilities they\u2019d been to. It finally felt \u201clike day one,\u201d according to Abeel.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt other hospitals, they weren\u2019t about recovery or making families feel hopeful,\u201d he says. \u201cThey just wanted to find the right medication combination to clear the patient. At Navos, for the very first time, we as parents became partners in the process of our daughter\u2019s treatment. Our fears were replaced with feelings of hope. Meseret thrived there. She set goals, learned about emotional regulation and coping skills, and acknowledged for the first time that she had a mental illness.\u201d<\/p>\n
Abeel and Lopez were so grateful for the level of care their daughter was shown at Navos that they decided to become donors to the organization. Many Navos programs, including some that Meseret benefited from, rely on donor support. It wasn\u2019t long after that when Abeel was approached about the idea of becoming a board member and readily applied.<\/p>\n
Today, Abeel calls it a privilege to serve on the board in two different capacities, through the finance and operations committee and the executive committee. He says this service has provided a new space for his own personal form of healing, as many of the other board members have gone through similar experiences with loved ones trying to overcome mental illness.<\/p>\n
He recalls one recent interaction with an emeritus board member that especially stuck with him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis other member and I have a lot in common in that we both have children who struggle with different types of severe mental illnesses,\u201d Abeel explains. \u201cShe came up to me after a meeting one Monday evening and said, \u2018I hope everything\u2019s going well with your family, and I just want you to know that I know what you\u2019re going through.\u2019 That meant a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meseret continues to live with behavioral health issues today and has received care at other Navos facilities. The reality of her diagnosis (schizo-affective disorder) is that her treatment isn\u2019t a short-term chapter in her life that can be quickly treated and resolved.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis type of diagnosis is a long game; it\u2019s not a one-time episode in our lives,\u201d Lopez says. \u201cBy sharing this, we hope that other people can become more educated about the realities that we, and so many other families like ours, face when it comes to behavioral health. Through it all, Navos has been a beacon for us. From the beginning, they\u2019ve held the vision of Meseret as a well person with a bright future ahead of her.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a dad, there are two big things Abeel hopes for Meseret\u2019s future. He knows they\u2019re both possible, with the help of Navos and their newly formed partnership with the MultiCare Behavioral Health Network.<\/p>\n